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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Hen of the Woods Recipe - Maitake Mushroom Jerky

We have been finding large amounts of hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa) this season, staring with the first find at the end of August. After an initial early flush, they started fruiting heavily in late September, and we have found more than 30 hens so far this season. We preserve our hens mostly by dehydrating the fronds to use later for soup stock, and by freezing the cores and more fronds to chop up for burgers. Robert also made lots of sausage with hens this year, using the same technique for making vegetarian sausage made from sulfur shelf mushrooms.

We needed to find something else to do with the pounds of mushrooms in the fridge, so we made some wonderful jerky. We found that this works best with slices from the core, or with very large fronds, since the pieces shrink up quite a bit in the dehydrator. We are using our Excalibur dehydrator, but an oven set on the lowest temperature will work, although the drying times will vary. We store our dried jerky in covered glass jars, but if we had a vacuum sealer, that would work well too. It doesn't last long around here, and it disappears even faster if we bring it out to a potluck event. This recipe makes a sweet/salty/spicy jerky, and the flavors can be changed to suit your tastes.

Hen of the Woods Jerky Makes about 2 cups marinade, enough for a large hen

1. Place all marinade ingredients in a blender, and puree for a minute. Pour the marinade in a glass or non-reactive shallow pan, preferably one with a cover.
2. Clean the hen of the woods mushroom, making 1/8" thick slices of the core and the larger fronds. All parts can be used, but they will dehydrate at different rates and shrink up quite small.
3. Boil the mushroom for 10 minutes, and drain completely. Place the boiled hen pieces in the marinade while still hot, and refrigerate for 4-6 hours.
4. Remove the pieces of hen from the marinade and drain the excess liquid off before arranging on dehydrator trays. If drying in the oven, use wire racks placed on a sheet pan. Arrange the marinated mushroom on the trays and dehydrate at 120-130°F for 6-12 hours, until dried and leathery. The time will vary based on the thickness and sizes of the pieces, so check it often.
5. Store in an airtight jar or vacuum pack.

We often have more mushroom pieces than the dehydrator can handle at once, so we use the marinade one more time to flavor another batches, the second batch getting soaked a bit longer, until we use up all the hen. Check out these photos to see how much a very thick frond will shrink up, the top picture is raw, then the center picture is after boiling, and the third picture is after marination and dehydration.

I just made a batch of this following the recipe exactly. OMG. It is incredibly good. It came out perfectly and the flavor is so great and so well-balanced. Thanks, Karen, for this awesome new way to handle maitakes! This is going to become a standard for me.

Robert and Gillian are lacto-ovo vegetarians, but they will eat fish when we vacation on a tropical island. I am an omnivore. I believe all of our recipes are lacto-ovo vegetarian at least, with a few vegan ones thrown in.

I just ran across this recipe and was curious as to if you want the "jerky" slightly pliable or totally dehydrated where it breaks upon bending. We were lucky enough to find several pounds of hens, and really want to give this recipe a try.

We originally tested the recipe with king oysters, Pleurotus eryngii, but hose are very thick, hearty mushrooms. I don't see why the idea wouldn't work with regular oysters, but they are mostly gills and might make smaller bits of jerky.

Saw someone try this with Armillaria caps and said they turned out really small and it wasn't worth it. Still, given my love of the way the Maitake turned out (Which incidentally seems to taste a lot like the original beef jerky made by Jack Links), I do plan to try this with Oysters as well.Instant fan, hope to find more stunning recipes on your blog as well. Thank you for sharing!